


Dauntless

by Merlin Missy (mtgat)



Category: Up All Night - Beck (Music Video)
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 21:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14656455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/pseuds/Merlin%20Missy
Summary: Camlin's destiny is to be a princess. Camlin wants no part of it.





	Dauntless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dawnstone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstone/gifts).



The problem was her name, Camlin had decided years ago.

"It's pretty, like a princess," said her mom, and she always gave Camlin a wistful smile. Mom had always wanted to be a princess, long dresses and handsome princes, and everything Disney. Only the accident of the nurses at the hospital where Camlin and her brother Logan squalled their way into this world had saved her from being named Cammlyne, which would have been worse.

She'd tried being a Cammie at school a few times, but Logan was more popular and had more friends and insisted on calling her the name he knew, and now she was Camlin forever.

"Smile," Mom said. "You're beautiful when you smile. My little princess!"

"I'm nobody's princess," she said, and went to her room, and ignored the music coming through the wall from Logan's room.

Her bookshelf was full of fairy tales, because Mom thought they were safe. Mom wanted to keep both of her children safe from the monsters in her own past. Dad hadn't been a monster. He'd been a selfish prick for sure, and he was late on the child support and he bailed during his custody visits whenever he could, but those didn't make him an ogre, they made him a typical jerk. Camlin knew how to deal with jerks.

* * *

One night, a night like any other, she woke up suddenly at midnight. There'd been a noise. She blinked sleep from her eyes, and the noise happened again: a cricket's chirp.

Ugh. She rolled out of bed and hunted around for it, until she found the green-brown body on the floor by her window. She scooped it up on a piece of paper.

"Hello, Camlin," said the cricket in a high, raspy voice.

Camlin stared at the paper.

"I've come to tell you a secret! You're really a princess! You and Logan are … "

Camlin opened the window and dumped paper and cricket outside, then slammed the window shut. She went back to bed.

* * *

She forgot about the cricket the next morning, until she heard it singing outside her apartment building.

"Hello, Princess Camlin!"

She couldn't find it in the matted half-scrub that passed for grass between the sidewalk and the wall, and stopped looking when she felt eyes on her from behind. Some boys were walking by, busting a gut to see her digging in the dirt.

"Fuck you," she said, and wiped her hands.

"Not even if you paid me," said one of the boys. They kept laughing as they walked off.

Camlin heard the cricket chirp again behind her. She let out a groan of disgust and stomped inside all the way up to her room.

* * *

The next day, Camlin skipped school and went to see the witch.

The witch lived in a trailer park close to the lake. There were nicer homes along the lake shore, and everyone said the trailer park owner would sell out any day to a developer who'd knock together some quarter million dollar houses, but the years passed and the trailers stayed. Camlin knew it was because the witch lived there, and the witch didn't intend to move.

The witch's trailer was a dusty green with grey shutters that used to be black. Her rusted-out pickup sat in the gravel pit that served as her parking spot, which meant she was home. Camlin knocked on her door, waiting for the slow slide of the bolt before the aluminum door swung open and the reek of cat piss wafted out.

"What do you want?" asked the witch.

"I have a question. I need an answer." Camlin held up her wad of cash, hoping that the twenty wrapped around the pile of ones made it look like more. The witch's eyes told her she knew very well what a twenty wrapped around a pile of ones looked like, but she cracked open the door and gestured Camlin inside.

This was the third time Camlin had come here. The first time, she'd come with her friend Hailey, who'd been turned away at the pharmacy when she'd tried to buy some Plan B. The witch had given her the pack, waved away Hailey's money, and shooed them both out before she was late for work. The second time, Camlin had come with her friend Jorge, who wanted to know if the football player he was crushing on really liked him back or was leading him on to beat him up with his pals. The witch had looked into her ramen and said Braeden liked Jorge back but he was already sleeping with another boy who'd given him herpes.

Today Camlin was alone. She sat at the witch's red formica table, folding her hands to keep from picking at the place where the plastic seal was fraying off. The smell of cats wasn't as bad now, covered by the smell of old cigarettes. The witch didn't smoke, Camlin thought. One of her old lovers used to. She didn't know how she knew that. Maybe it was being inside this magic cave, dark panelling surrounding her, the TV volume low on some game show that burst randomly with the hiss of applause, and the glint of cat eyes peering from the hallway.

"What's your question?"

"Why the fuck did a cricket come into my room to tell me I'm a princess?" She slid the wad of cash across the table. The witch grabbed it and stuck it into her pocket.

"Good question."

The witch got up and went to the front of her trailer where the tiny kitchen looked out onto the dreary road between her home and the blue trailer across from her. The butt end of the trailer had the bedroom, and that would look out over the grey lake. The witch opened cabinets, the cheap plywood making a thin slam as she shut them against their magnets again. She threw a pot of water onto the stove and turned on the burner. Camlin watched, observing the movements of her hands and the way she muttered as she opened a can of tomato paste over a saucepan and threw in seasonings, waiting for the water to boil.

"What kind of cricket?"

"I didn't ask."

"Green? Grey? Black? Dancing with a top hat and spats?"

"Greenish-brown. No top hat. It looked like a normal cricket."

The witch muttered quietly and poured half a box of cheap spaghetti into the water, not breaking the strands like Mom did. She stirred the pot, breathing in the scented steam. "And it told you that you're a princess?"

"It said I was a princess. It was about to tell me my brother Logan is a prince. Then I threw it out the window."

"Why?"

Camlin shrugged. "Because it's stupid. Crickets don't talk. I'm not a princess. Logan sure as fuck isn't a prince."

The witch stirred the pot. "Is he your older brother or your younger brother?"

"Twin. Younger by twenty minutes."

"Hm. And you're sure it wasn't a dream?"

Another shrug. "It talked to me again the next day."

"What did you do with it then?"

"I couldn't find it. I was going to squish it."

The witch snorted. "Now that's stupid. If I had a talking cricket, I'd go on talk shows with it."

Camlin kicked the rung of her chair. "Crickets don't talk," she repeated.

"If you thought that, you wouldn't have come here today. You want to know why a cricket told you that you're a princess?"

"Yes!" She wasn't dumb enough to say that was why she'd paid.

"Because you're a princess."

Camlin let out a sound of disgust. She scooted her chair out. "Fine. Thanks."

"Sit your ass down," said the witch. "I'm not done."

Camlin threw herself back into the chair, feeling it creak. The witch glared at her. Camlin scooted into a more polite position.

"Your father is a prince."

Now she laughed. She didn't have a cute laugh, whatever Mom wanted. She snorted. "My dad's an idiot."

"Maybe. He's also a prince. Don't think that means anything," she said, seeing Camlin about to object. "It just means that somewhere back in your family history, some king fucked the chambermaid or his mistress or his cousin on his mother's side, and you got an ancestor out of the deal. It's possible your mother has the same thing in her past. Go back far enough, and most people have royalty in their genes, either the king of the land or the queen of the tribe. It's not a big deal. There are about a thousand people between you and the nearest throne if the country even still exists."

"I'm not a fucking princess!"

The witch mirrored her shrug. "You asked."

"Why did the cricket tell me? If it's nothing special, why bother?"

"Who knows with crickets? Maybe that one hops into every girl's bedroom to tell her, hoping for a kiss."

Camlin scrunched up her face. "I'm not kissing a bug."

"I didn't say you ought to." The witch stirred her pot, then poured the spaghetti through a strainer. "The cricket wanted you to know. You don't have to do anything with the information."

"Right."

"What do you want to be?"

"Huh?"

"You don't want to be a princess. Whatever. That's your business. But what do you want to be instead of a princess?"

One of Mom's fairy tales flashed into her mind, and before Camlin could stop herself, she said, "I want to be a knight." Instantly she wanted to pull the words back. That was even worse. "I mean … "

"You said what you meant." The witch plunked down a small bowl of spaghetti in front of her and gave her a fork.

Camlin looked at the noodles covered in the cheap tomato paste. Mom made good spaghetti, fresh pasta and homemade sauce she simmered all day until their apartment smelled like Italy. She made herself take a bite of the witch's food anyway. It was okay. Not great, but okay. "Thanks."

The witch sat down across from her with her own bowl and a slice of white bread with cheap spread pretending to be butter. She didn't offer Camlin any bread, using her slice to scoop bites of noodles onto her fork. She spoke as she ate: "Princesses are a dime a dozen. Knights are something else. Most of them died out last century. You want to be a knight, you have to train. Lots of exercise, working out with swords, practicing virgin rescue, that sort of thing."

Camlin couldn't tell if she was joking. She chewed her own spaghetti, listening and thinking. She liked to go for runs. She could run with a stick. That could be like a sword. She was less sure about the virgins thing, and wondered if the witch was teasing her about the friends she'd been here with before.

"Okay," she said, slurping in her last noodle while the witch cleaned the remnants of sauce from her bowl with the last bite of her bread. She handed the last bite to Camlin, who took it, confused. "What?"

"Go on."

It looked gross with the red sauce and the seasonings, and the edges where Camlin could see the shape of the witch's bite. She closed her eyes and popped it into her mouth, swallowing without chewing.

She opened her eyes, and saw that the witch watched her with approval.

"You don't have to be a princess. Go be a knight instead."

* * *

Logan said she was nuts getting up before dawn to go for runs every morning. The first couple of days, Camlin agreed. Her lungs ached with cold air, stopping her after a few blocks to reach for her inhaler, and her legs burned. Her arm was tired from carrying the heavy stick, but Mom liked that she had some kind of self-defense with her.

Camlin ran, learning what the streets around the apartment block looked like with the trash trucks oozing along and the streetlights popping out one by one. Camlin ran, holding her sword in front of her as her arm flagged again and again, pretending to smite foes. Camlin ran, her legs gradually getting used to the new exercise and her asthma learning to fucking deal. Camlin ran, telling herself to fight only when she needed to fight, to protect the weak, to bring honor to her kingdom of rent-controlled apartments and trailers by the lake.

The cricket sang outside her window every night. Camlin got a white noise machine from the drug store and blocked out the sound.

* * *

"There's a party Friday," said Hailey. "Do you want to go?" She was wearing her makeup differently again, more eyeshadow, darker lipstick. Camlin hadn't noticed until now. "It's a costume party."

"No, I'm busy." She'd checked out more books on chivalry from the library. She made notes, trying to decide what tenets she would live by when she was properly knighted. She would fight for the honor of some beautiful maiden, though not Hailey. Hailey was only interested in boys.

"You're always busy. Come with me. I don't want to go by myself."

"Maybe. Okay?"

"That's no."

"It's maybe."

* * *

Logan was going to the party. He loved to be in the middle of things. "You should go. Loosen up a little."

"No thanks. You get wasted, I'll stay here."

"Fine," he said. "You waste the best years of your life jogging or stuck in your room with books. I'm going to go live a little."

* * *

Logan texted her at midnight: "im so drunk"

She texted him back: "RU OK?"

He didn't reply.

Camlin looked around her bedroom. She'd drawn herself a couple of devices: a dragon rampant, a raven sinister, a field of roses. The pictures hung on her walls with tape, waiting for her to make her decision.

She grabbed her jacket.

"Where are you going?" Mom asked, sitting in front of the TV.

"Out to pick up Logan."

"Okay." She didn't even look as Camlin closed the door. Camlin grabbed her stick from the hallway, then dropped it. She would take on her armaments as she went among her enemies.

The cricket chirped as she walked by. "Shut up," she said.

The street sign's device wasn't quite right. An ancient rune, she decided, and kicked the pole until it fell. A princess in a gown walked up to her. "I'm looking for … " Camlin walked by her, ignoring her.

"I have come to the valley of darkness," she said to herself. "I am on a quest to seek the Prince."

She entered the apartment building, newer and nicer than hers. Her feet clicked on the hard floor. Boys ignored her as she passed by them, the same boys who'd laughed at her when she'd chased the cricket. She grabbed a bag from one. He didn't notice. "I am on a quest to find the Prince," she said again, dug into his bag, and grabbed the first thing she found. She wasn't a fan of pink frosting on doughnuts, but she took a huge bite as she walked. Sustenance. A knight must find food where she could.

"I am a knight of the realm," said Camlin. "I am Camlin the Mighty." That didn't sound quite right. "I am Camlin the Great." No.

Inside the winding hallways and corridors, she strode, the weight of her calling on her shoulders. Her lungs told her she wasn't mighty, wasn't great. Camlin took a long puff from her inhaler and held the albuterol in her lungs, letting the stimulant fill her like a magic potion.

"I am Camlin the Dauntless," she said aloud. "I have come to rescue the Prince." She felt dressed in armor, ready to face anything.

She burst into the party like dragon swooping into a luckless village. Instead of plunder, she searched for her brother. She was used to jeers, even jeers from her drunk classmates and kids she didn't know. They hurled beer cans at her, which she shielded herself against easily. She grabbed a bong and threw it, casting aside a can tower on someone's sleeping face.

Logan wasn't here. She moved to the next room.

Hailey rested her weary head against a lamb, watching her. "You came."

"I have come to rescue the Prince."

"Okay."

"Do you want to leave?"

"No." Hailey closed her eyes, resting her face in the lamb's wool. Fresh wool was soft but greasy, Camlin's research had told her. Hailey's makeup would smear.

Camlin walked on, past bodies writhing on the floor, picking her way through them as though she tiptoed past the most dangerous siren call. Above the music and the noise of the party, she heard the cricket chirping. Maybe it would lead her to Logan.

There was a haze in the air, pot and cigarettes both. She picked up a dog end of a joint and took a puff. The cricket knew where she was going. She did not. The noise led her to a room lit with only candles. That was dangerous, her waking mind told her. Too many drunk people and a little fire would end in tragedy.

Chirp.

"Hello, Camlin!" said the cricket, surrounded by bottles.

"I am a knight of the realm. I am here to rescue the Prince from his foes."

"You'd have made a much better princess."

"Fuck you."

The cricket chirped. Bottles surrounded him. "These are magical elixirs, you know."

"They look like Jim Beam and cheap vodka."

"To finish your quest, you must choose the right elixir. It will give you the knowledge you require."

Camlin stared at the cricket, but it moved away before she could bring her palm down to squish it. She looked at the bottles again. Still a mix of cheap booze and someone's parents' liquor cabinet. "Which one?"

"You'll know."

Camlin grabbed the clear bottle, the one with no label, and she quenched one of the candles in it before pouring herself a glass. "This is a terrible idea."

"You wanted to be a knight. Knights must make terrible ideas work. You could have sat in your tower and cried instead."

"I'm going to step on you one of these days," said Camlin, and she drank the booze. It scorched her throat and hit her brain in one foul-tasting moment. "Fuck!"

"Find your prince, and send him to me. Maybe he'll want to accept his destiny."

Camlin raised her boot, but the cricket was already gone. Off-balance, she fell to the ground, her brain telling her she fought with helmeted warriors and climbed through leafy forests, continuing her quest even as her head spun and she tried not to puke. "Fuck," she tried to say again, but in her ears it was a car engine roaring to life.

The joint had been a bad idea. The booze had been a worse idea. She ought to go plop down beside Hailey and snuggle the sheep until the room stopped spinning.

"I am Camlin the Dauntless," she whispered against the floor. "I am Camlin the Dauntless."

She rose to her feet, letting the room re-equilibrate. She knew where Logan was. Two rooms over, and found him passed out cold on a pool table. Some asshole had been writing on his face, and it was a miracle no one had drawn a cock yet. He smelled awful.

"I love you, but you're a fucking idiot," she told him, gathering her brother into her arms like a doll. "I am Camlin the Dauntless. You are Prince Logan the Fool. I am here to save you, asshole."

Logan smiled in his drunken stupor as she carried him out of the party.

* * *

In the morning, Camlin brought Logan some water and some aspirin. "Here, doofus."

He shook his head, bleary and gross. "Did you get me from the party?"

"Yes."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." It was awkward. They didn't talk to each other much if they could help it.

"How long have you been a knight in shining armor?"

"What?"

"I saw your armor last night. It was cool. I don't know if anyone else saw it." He rubbed his head. "Does that make sense?"

She'd felt the armor on her body. She'd held her shield on her arm. "Kind of. Has there been a cricket in your bedroom at all the last couple of nights?"

"Yeah. Did you put it there?"

"No. You might want to listen to it tonight. Or squish it. Whatever," she said, and left him there to think. 

She had no stick, but her hand felt a sword in it as she raised her arm. She had dropped her shield somewhere, but she felt the comforting weight on her other arm. Outside the apartment, bad things were happening to people. Princes needed saving. Princesses needed someone to free them from their towers. Maidens and lads and grandmothers and drugstore cashiers and trailer park witches needed her help.

She stepped out into the dreary morning, and felt the grey light glint off the armor only she and Logan could see.

"I am Camlin the Dauntless," she announced to the world. "I've come to save you."


End file.
